Many of these books are available at Podiobooks, where creators have uploaded hundreds of self-published and public domain audiobooks. Some of have also been published in print after a successful podcasting run — although sometimes the printed version is substantially different from the audio version. All of the books below are available for download, free of charge (although donations are generally appreciated):

If you're looking for a thriller:

7th Son by JC Hutchins: Hutchins' 7th Son series, which begins with 7th Son: Descent (although there is also a prequel anthology), focuses on seven men who are suddenly ripped from their lives and discover that they are cloned from a single man. As if adjusting to that world-shattering revelation weren't enough, they're also told that their genetic donor has just assassinated the president of the United States, and they might be the only men who can stop him before he unleashes a destructive technology on the world. There are actually two versions of 7th Son: Descent: the original "beta" version, and an audio version of the print novel.

If you're looking for some alien-induced horror:

Infected by Scott Sigler: Alien parasites travel to Earth and make a nice, cozy home inside a handful of human bodies. The unlucky hosts develop uncomfortable, triangular growths on their skin and their unbalanced hormones drive them to homicidal madness (and that's even before the little critters turn out to be sentient). A CIA agent and an epidemiologist are trying to get to the root of the people gone mad, while an already temperamental ex-linebacker tries to hold it together before the parasites drive him to murder.

If you're looking for supernatural worldbuilding:

FETIDUS by James Durham: Set in a supernatural Washington, DC, in 2034, FETIDUS stands for Foundation for the Ethical Treatment of the Innocently Damned, Undead, and Supernatural. FETIDUS is an advocacy group that provides services for and lobbies on behalf of the meta-human community — and after the Undead Outbreaks of the 2020s, the organization as its work cut out for it. Art Blanchard is an attorney for FETIDUS with a dark past and the inner monologue of the Mickey Spillane character. The podcast drips with humorously self-aware noir, but its real strength is its exploration of the social and political issues facing supernatural beings.

If you're looking for an unconventional superhero story:

Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty: Mur Lafferty is an incredibly prolific podcaster (be sure to check out her Lessons from a Geek Fu Master), and Playing for Keeps became her first print novel — after she podcasted it. Set in the same universe as Lafferty's short story, "Barry Koleman, Hero," Playing for Keeps follows a group of meta-humans whose abilities, while interesting and occasionally useful, aren't powerful enough to qualify them as superheroes. Keepsie Branson is one such non-hero; anything that belongs to her can never be taken from her. Instead of being a hero, though, Keepsie owns a local watering hole where others with minimal powers gather to bitch and moan about the city's superheroes. But when the villain Doodad thrusts a mysterious orb into Keepsie's hands, she and her friends are caught in a battle between the heroes and the villains — and they're not sure whose side they should take.

If you're looking for an unconventional supervillain story:

How to Succeed in Evil by Patrick E. McLean: Edwin Windsor is an efficiency consultant for supervillains, ensuring that their nefarious deeds are as fruitful as possible. One day, Edwin gets sick of his clients' inefficient ways, and decides he could make more money — and piss off the local supervillain contingent — if he strikes out on his own to become the ultimate supervillain. After the podcast's initial run, McLean turned How to Succeed in Evil into a full-length audiobook.

If you prefer short stories:

Voices: New Media Fiction edited by Mur Lafferty: There are tons of excellent places to find podcasted short speculative fiction. Clarkesworld Magazine has an excellent podcast, and the Escape Pod and Pseudopod podast magazines provide a steady stream of science fiction and horror stories, respectively. But a great place to start on short podcasted fiction is with Voices. The anthology includes stories from familiar names like James Patrick Kelly and Cory Doctorow, as well as several other writers deeply involved in the podcasting community. It's a fun set of stories, as well as a handy introduction to some of the more prolific writers asking you to listen to their novels.

The story, from the Solaris Book Of New Science Fiction Vol. 2, is up as an audio file on Kowal's site, and it's well worth listening to. For one thing, Kowal has a great reading voice, very smooth and NPR-ish, and for another, the story is awesomely depressing. It's a great examination of art and the creative process, and what it feels like to be an artist who's looked at merely as a curiosity or as a momentary amusement for child barbarians. And art as a containment device for impotent rage. Robot Death Monkey illustration from RobotDeathMonkey.com. ["Evil Robot Monkey" at Mary Robinette Kowal]

The collection also includes contributions from Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, and Karl Schroeder (which is like my scifi dream team). Here's the premise of the book, according to Scalzi:

Welcome to a world where big cities are dying, dead - or transformed into technological megastructures. Where once-thriving suburbs are now treacherous Wilds. Where those who live for technology battle those who would die rather than embrace it. It is a world of zero-footprint cities, virtual nations, and armed camps of eco-survivalists. Welcome to the dawn of uncivilization.

The whole book comes out Tuesday, so start warming up your audio devices using solar or bicycle power. You can download Lake's complete story here, and get samples of other stories here. I'm always excited to see another Scalzi joint.

Your Weekend Goodie: Free Metatropolis Story [via Whatever]

When Amazon.com's SF audiobooks imprint Audible Frontiers launched earlier this year, we were interested in the potential of something new to entertain us on our morning commutes. With the line now in its third month, we checked in with Audible's director of content, Steve Feldberg, to see whether it looks like there's a future in this whole "books in your ear" thing.

The Audible Frontiers imprint has been around for a couple of months now. What has the audience reaction been like so far?
We’ve gotten a good deal of positive response, and much of it centers on how Audible has really focused on expanding the number of SF&F books available in audio. In fact, that’s probably our biggest accomplishment so far – just increasing the selection.

Specifically, we’ve enjoyed great reviews for our productions of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series; Robert J. Sawyer’s novels, including the Hugo-winning Hominids (as well as the other books in his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy); Mike Resnick’s Starship series; Hugo-winning novellas by Connie Willis, Harry Turtledove, Joe Haldeman, Allen Steele, as well as Resnick; and sci-fi classics like Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time.

What was the basis for the creation of the imprint in the first place - Is Audible planning to create sub-stores for each literary genre, or is there something special about SF that demanded its own space (If you'll excuse the pun)?
There were two key factors. We’ve seen consistent growth in SF&F – yet we also heard from customers that they wished the selection were better. So it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that we needed to improve the breadth and depth of our catalog.

Audible Frontiers is the biggest part of the strategy, but we have two other current initiatives that are highly relevant. First is our long-standing partnership with Harlequin, under which we produce 4-6 titles per month. These have consistently included fantasy titles by Maria V. Snyder, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Armintrout, Gena Showalter, and other great authors. Second is our relatively new partnership with HarperCollins to produce some of their great SF&F titles. The first wave includes the Acorna’s Children series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough; Star Strike by Ian Douglas; Hunter's Run by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham; and Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys... The only minor distinction is that we don’t brand any of our co-produced titles as “Audible Frontiers”. The key point is that we’re looking at all aspects of SF & Fantasy – contemporary sci-fi, classic sci-fi, epic fantasy, paranormal fantasy, you name it.

How did Orson Scott Card come to be involved with the site?
Scott is, of course, a big best selling author and an icon in the field, and a special favorite among Audible listeners. But what was most important to us is that he’s an avid audiobook fan – and he really gets the value of the audiobook experience. So when we were looking for an author whose opinion would be most valued by Audible SF&F listeners, he was a natural choice. It all turned out to be pretty simple; we reached out, Scott agreed, and we were off to the races. What’s been most gratifying is that Scott takes the time to craft a detailed review of each “Selects” title and record it in audio. That really brings his reviews to life for our listeners.

What's planned for the future of the imprint? More original works? More guest columnists? Any surprises coming up?
We have dozens more titles coming this year under the Audible Frontiers imprint. For me, the most exciting current project is that we’re bringing Fritz Leiber’s entire, classic swords-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to audio for the first time. But even better than that – Neil Gaiman has recorded exclusive introductions to each of the seven books. Gaiman is a huge Leiber fan, which truly comes out in his introductions. The Guest Editor program will continue to be a monthly feature. Robert J. Sawyer is our Editor for July, S.M. Stirling is on board for August, and we’ll go from there!

Past that, over the next few months we’ll be offering great contemporary SF&F like David Drake’s complete RCN/Daniel Leary series; Kay Kenyon’s critically-acclaimed The Entire and the Rose novels; Allen Steele’s Coyote trilogy; Sharon Shinn’s Twelve Houses series, E.E. Knight’s complete Vampire Earth series; and lots more. Plus, we’ll be bringing into audio for the first time classic award winners by Clifford D. Simak (CITY and WAY STATION); Roger Zelazny (LORD OF LIGHT); and John Varley (TITAN, WIZARD, DEMON and more). And we’ve got a few surprises that we can’t quite reveal yet!

Image courtesy Employee Lounge

[Audible Frontiers]

The trick to Audible's imprint is that the new line will be providing all-new works in addition to previously-print-published writing. According to Publishers Weekly:

The imprint... will feature original works from a number of authors such as Jack Campbell, Harry Turtledove, Mike Resnick, Allen Steele and Connie Willis. In addition, through deals with HarperCollins, Macmillan Audio, Recorded Books, Blackstone Audio, Harlequin and Wonder Audio Audible is offering exclusive digital downloads from some of those publishers' bestselling science fiction writers. As part of the imprint, Hugo Award-winning author Orson Scott Card will make monthly recommendations, and the first OSC Selects is Star Born by Andre Norton, priced at $17.47.

StarShipSofa producer Tony Smith says of the podcast:

Each week the StarShipSofa will deliver a full package of SF related audio material all free including audio fiction, fact audio essays, flash fiction and poetry, all by leading names in the SF field. Many many writers have agreed to let StarShipSofa narrate their works including Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, Alistair Reynolds, M John Harrison, Ian Watson, Pat Cadigan, Harry Harrison, Joan D Vinge, Norman Spinrad, Ian MacDonald, J D Nordley, Bruce Sterling, Gweneth Jones, Landon Jones, John Varley, Pat Murphy, John Kessel, Laurel Winter, Jeff Vandermeer, Kevin J Anderson, Bradley Denton and Matthew Hughes, Ian Whates, Ken MacLoed, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, Mary Rosenblum, Nancy Kress and Chaz Brenchley. There will be two shows per week, the Wednesday show, also know as Aural Delights will contain narrated audio fiction, fact and poerty and the weekend show will be an in depth look into an author's life and work

StarShipSofa [official site]

• Minority Report and Other Stories, by Phillip K. Dick: Keir Dullea (who played Dave in 2001) reads these short stories from Dick's library. "Minority Report" is, of course, a lot better (and different) than the movie was, but the standout here is "Second Variety," which details artificially intelligent robots that have learned how to disguise themselves as humans in order to be more deadly. This came out years before Terminator and Battlestar Galactica, and is worth the price alone. Collection also includes "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" which became Total Recall, and "Paycheck," which became a terrible Ben Affleck movie of the same name.
• The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King: King's science fiction meets sorcery Dark Tower series has been coming out in dribbles for decades, and the last volume finally came out in 2004. I found that the best way to catch up with these was by chucking them onto my iPod while I was stuck in the car in Los Angeles all morning and evening. Some of the seven books in the series are expertly read by Frank Muller, who has narrated a huge share of King's novels. Tragically, he had a motorcycle accident several years ago, and has been unable to resume his narration work as a result. George Guidall picked up the reins and does an equally impressive job.
• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card: In 2002 a 20th anniversary edition of Card's novel about the extensive training of young boy by the military to be the savior of all mankind was issued with a full cast production reading the story, and a bonus epilogue tacked on by Card. The project was extremely successful, and they also released the sequel Ender's Shadow with the same cast members. If you've never picked this book up, this is a great way to get into it.
• Neuromancer, by William Gibson: Gibson himself reads this audiobook version of his classic novel, and U2 provided a track for the book, with the group Black Rain contributing music and sound effects throughout the reading. It's moody and atmospheric, great for listening to while the rain is hammering down outside. Sometimes it can (oddly) be a mixed bag when the author reads their own work, but Gibson does a fantastic job.
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: Jennifer Wiltsie not only reads both the abridged and unabridged versions of this book about a nanotechnology-built learning "illustrated primer," but she also provides different voices and accents for all the characters. Not many readers can pull this off without being distracting, and she does a great job with this, particularly with the Primer and the young Nell character.
• Idlewild, by Nick Sagan: This book by Nick Sagan, the son of Carl, is read by a cast of characters and features a superb robotic female monotone as the voice of one of the A.I. taskmaster programs in this story about a virtual reality school for rich kids. It owes a lot to The Matrix, but the ending opens up a whole new world where the sequel Edenborn takes place. Immersive narration takes you deep inside the VR world in the novel.
• A Scanner Darkly, by Phillip K. Dick: Paul Giamatti does an excellent job of reading this novel and capturing the frenetic apathy that the world of Substance D brings on. I listened to this not long before the animated film came out, and I vastly prefer the audiobook version. Giamatti's range as an actor shows off even when you can't see his face.
• Transmission, by Hari Kunzru: Kunzru reads his own novel about a hacker from India who thinks he's found paradise in the United States, until he realizes he'll never escape his slave labor job as a database engineer for a temp firm. He unleashes a powerful computer virus that infects your computer with a dancing video of a Bollywood starlet so he can appear to step in and save the day with a "cure," but it doesn't go as planned. A great listen, and a wonderful read.
• Dune, by Frank Herbert: Clocking in at 21 hours long, this unabridged version of Herbert's classic novel about desert planets and space-folding spice drugs is read by a full cast and will require a serious time commitment. However, you'll get more satisfaction out of listening to this than you will watching the movie or the miniseries again. Perfect if you decide to drive across the continent, or through a desert somewhere.
• Idoru, by William Gibson: I didn't want to have two Gibson novels on this list, but Idoru was the first science fiction book I ever listened to, and it got me through my first year in Los Angeles. I have probably listened to this thing at least ten times, and it never gets old. Actor Jay O. Sanders does a superb reading job, providing different voices for all of the characters, and captures this book perfectly. Plus, it's a great starting point for Gibson if you missed out on the whole Neuromancer cycle.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: This series has appeared in multiple formats: read by the author, read by the full cast, read by Simon Jones (who played Arthur in the TV and radio versions), read by Martin Freeman (who played Arthur in the movie version), the BBC Radio versions, and even a Live in Concert version, featuring Douglas Adams giving live readings from his works in front of an audience. With multiple readers and multiple books, there is a ton to choose from here. In my opinion, the Douglas Adams and Simon Jones (and full cast version, including Simon Jones) editions are the best. Sorry, Martin. Technically, this gives this list a lot more than 11 books, but who's counting?